imperio : to rule
by NyxBorn
Summary: she tugs him along on a little string; he doesn't know why he lets her. or: Ted loves Andromeda, but her affections are a puzzle.


They had planned to run away, to elope the night before her wedding. They would Apparate from his flat in Muggle London to a small chapel.

And she is _late_. Half an hour, he expected, an hour he had not.

Finally, she has arrived, but he is not as composed as he expected, or wary, or eyes gleaming with excitement. Her lips are swollen, her robes wrinkled, hair a tangled mess. Jealousy surges through him as she makes her way to him. Perhaps it was just that she had to distract _him_ \- but she is _his_ bride tonight, and it feels somewhat wrong that she'd be going to the altar with Rabastan Lestrange's kisses so recent on her lips.

She greets him with a sly smile, and a slow lingering kiss, the exact kind he likes so much. Her tongue darts along his lips and slips in, a hand slipping through his robes. As his knees go weak, and he holds her close, he swears he can taste a taste that isn't hers, that speaks to him of gold-and-blood and a masculinity of a type he does not possess. Rabastan Lestrange, he swears as the kiss grows more heated, and her hand coaxes moans from him.

After she's milked him of what seems to be all he has, she breaks herself from his grasp, wiping her hand off on his robes. "I'm leaving you, Ted," she says evenly, calmly.

He cannot comprehend what she's just said at first, not after that delicious kiss and the. . .

"What?" It sinks in, her words. "Andromeda- 'Dromeda. . ."

"Rabastan Lestrange and I are marrying. Tomorrow." Her face is calm, and her hands don't tremble, her voice is confident. But he can see she is covering up her emotions, her feelings as she always does.

"He's told me he loves me." There is now a strange inflection in her voice; it now sounds dead and brittle.

" _I_ love you," he says, almost stupidly. But it is the only thing he can think to say.

"Rabastan told me he'd love me as much as he does now, even if I was a first~generation half-blood." Her fingers tremble as she smoothes out her sleeves. It is a mark of how conflicted she is, how confused she must be that this shows now.

Confusion, anger, and hurt must show on his face, because he wears no Perfect Pureblood Mask. She sees it, he knows, because she takes a small inhale, nostrils flaring.

"That means if my mother was raped by a Muggle, and passed me off as a Black, he'd still love me. If one of my parents was a Muggle-born, and the other a Muggle, he'd still love me. That is the highest declaration of love someone from a family like his can give to someone from a family like mine, because marriages have been dissolved for implying something of the like. He loves me _so_ much, Ted."

"I do too," he protests. Of course Lestrange loved Andromeda. You'd be a fool not to. Dark brown curls, pale gray eyes. Unblemished skin, tall, a curvy body that Muggle girls (and other witches) aspired to have. Long, tapered fingers, a lean layer of muscle, high cheekbones. She flirts healthy beauty with idealized beauty. She is aristocracy, confident in her place in the world, secure in her great good looks.

"You wouldn't love me," she says, "if I was not born a Black. You loved me because you could not reach me, because you thought you saw me."

"That's not true!" He protests, hurt that she would think that of him. "I-"

"While my mother passed me from eligible bachelor to eligible bachelor, you caught a moment of weakness, and thought I was letting you in. You fell in love with some idea of me that I allowed you to have, and encouraged." The statement is delivered in a deliberately cruel tone, her swollen mouth savoring each word.

"That," he snaps, "is a vicious _lie_. I loved you when I saw you mean, and when I saw you with your friends. I fell in love with _you_ , not with some idea."

She shakes her head almost mockingly. "Rabastan loves me as I am."

From anyone else, the statement would sound disgustingly naive. But from her, it's a promise of things he has never seen, but Lestrange has, a reminder that she has done things that he could not approve of, never condone with this other man, a subtle reminder that she need not lie to be with Lestrange, of the evil, disgusting practices their families share.

"You're cruel," he spits out. "You hold my heart from where you've slithered your way in, and you rip it out because some boy in blood-stained silk robes makes you feel bad. But think about me, if you need to feel bad to choose someone. My last two years at Hogwarts, _our_ two years, you flaunted your boyfriends in front of me, _fucked_ and bragged about them, and when I tried to get a girlfriend for cover, or to get myself away from your poisonous grasp, you get jealous! Same for these years!"

She licks her lips, and he forces himself not to run over and say he didn't mean any of that, he loves her and he'd never hurt her. But when she finally speaks, it is a few words that tear him apart more than anything else she has ever said to him.

"I don't have to hide who I am with Rabastan."

He reaches out to her, but she's already whirled around, and Disapparated away.

The next morning, Andromeda Black weds Rabastan Lestrange, and when Andromeda Lestrange's face, beaming and smirking at turns, glances at him from newspapers, he rips them apart. She was never his, she never loved him, she only played with him and tore him apart-

At school, Bellatrix was known as the cruellest sister. Narcissa would make cold remarks that would cut you to the bone, and Bellatrix would either treat you like scum on her shoe, or reduce you to a trembling pile of ashes. Andromeda would offer a choice remark from time to time, after gaining someone's confidence, but now he decided that she had truly been the cruelest. Bellatrix was the storm, Narcissa pure ice, and Andromeda was the poison of love.

So he'd written her off. Refused to answer any of her cordial owls - Andromeda Lestrange now, Andromeda Elladora Lestrange, Andromeda Black Lestrange, Andromeda Elladora Helena Black _Lestrange_ \- and Andromeda Lestrange could never be his, or even know filth like him.

But nine months later, she's at his door, robes crusted with blood, dark circles under wide eyes, her hair lank and greasy.

"It- it's not _min_ e," she whisper, hands trembling. "There was a- a little boy, all he wanted to do was ask if we've seen his pu- _puppy_. . . . . ." She breaks off, and buries her face in her hands. "I can't, Ted, Morgana knows I can't- I'm not- I was wrong, I love _you_ -"

He makes to slam the door in her face, but she's _crying_. She helped murder a _kid_ , and she's crying about him.

"It's not- Rabastan, he- he- he- he _Summoned_ the dog, and he froze the boy and he tore apart the dog, and I could do _nothing_ -"

"You could have done _something_!" He snapped. "You could have-"

"Rabastan _lifted_ the spell right after, and he wanted the boy to run at him, but I cast it again silently, so the boy wouldn't lose his life for it, and Rabastan _laughed_. . ."

He can say nothing as she comes apart weeping, and he can only guess how the story goes. Poor brave Andromeda Lestrange convinced her husband away with feminine wiles, and distracted him with sex.

"I- after it," she whispers, in a brittle sort of way, "I went to the boy where he was still frozen, and I wiped his memory, but I never got to-"

"You smell," he says, not unkindly. "You've lost weight, your nails aren't polished, your hair hasn't been washed. . . . ."

"Two weeks, he'll be out for three more. . . "

She took everything from him, she ripped his heart to shreds, and yet he cannot deny her. He invites her into his flat, and gives her his bed to sleep on, while he lays on couch cushions covered with blankets. He does not expect it, but-

Late that night, she comes to him, weeping, and he holds her as she cries, her thin body shaking. She calms only as she kisses him, and one thing leads into another as she whispers _yes_ , she _does_ want this-

The next weeks are spent much the same, a lazy haze of sex and love, and he swears he's drunk on her, and she's _happy_ again. She's regained her weight and a bit, she's developed some inner glow, but one day he wakes up, and instead of finding her at his side, or in the cramped kitchen with her hair pulled up, he finds a note in her careful hand, and it rips him apart once more.

 _Rabastan's home. I'm sorry_.

He wonders what he even is to her. Is he her whore, her lover, or someone she willfully and gleefully takes advantage of every time she can? He throws himself into work, trying to avoid whispers of the Lestranges, of the Blacks.

But three months later, it's pouring buckets, and she's at his door, hands folded over a slightly swollen stomach. He does not know how she is there, how she arrived, since there was no _Crack_! of an Apparation, but that could have been drowned out by thunder. He makes to close the door in her face once more, but before he can, she steps over to him, and gives him a long, hard kiss, fingernails digging into his shoulders.

She pulls away after a minute or so of his not responding, hurt in her eyes for a split-second, before she masks it with anger.

"She's yours," is all Andromeda says finally. "I'm pregnant, and-"

He's had enough. "How do you know?" He asks cruelly. "You've fucked us both enough that it could-"

"Marry me, Ted," she begs. "Please, marry me tonight, we'll raise our daughter together, just you and me-"

"Is _Rabastan_ away for the week again?"

"He's found out I'm pregnant," she says finally. "He- He thinks it's his, and I've had it checked out, and there's no doubt it's anyone's but yours. He's told Bella and Cissa and Roddy, our _parents_. . ."

"So pretend it is," he snaps. "You'd never be the first pureblood wife to horn her husband."

"I can't do that to him," she begins, then seemingly stops at the outrage clear in his face. "I mean, I _can't_. My family tree embroiders a newborn's name, and then puts down its true parents, Black and other."

He says nothing.

"Please," she begs. "I'm leaving him tonight, he'll know by tomorrow, I want to be married to _you_ -"

He feels some small pity for Rabastan. He knows how the man will feel, waking up, expecting to find Andromeda, only to find a cold note with a few cruel words.

"This child," she says, hand on her belly, "is _yours_."

"This child," he repeats, "is _yours_." He won't- no, he can't- let her treat him as she has before.

Her eyes flash with anger, and sadness. She kneels in front of him, and she brings out-

She has kept the ring. _His_ ring, Muggle silver, with a small garnet. "Ted," she begs. " _Edward_. Marry me, _please_. I want _you_."

He's uncomfortably aware of her nearness, and she wraps her arms around her legs. " _Please_."

He doesn't know if this is some deeper manipulation of hers, or if she means this, but Andromeda Lestrange is on her knees in front of him, _begging_ him, begging for him, and it is a move so uncharacteristic of her that some part of his heart cracks for her.

So he kneels down, and he tells her he will. The change is instantaneous, and he wonders how easily that's faked. But something- optimism, desperation, love, naivety and foolishness- tells him it isn't.

And so, that night, they go to a small officiate, and sign papers that they're wed. She carefully signs hers as Andromeda Black, he as Edward Tonks. This is nothing like the Lestrange-Black affair, but it is something, he thinks, that she likes more. They're now legally married in the Muggle world, and she comes home with him and falls asleep with him.

When he wakes up, he half-expects her to be gone, but she's still next to him, mouth parted as if for a kiss.

It is the calm before the _true_ storm, he knows, and he doesn't want to think of the fallout.


End file.
